Bible Commentaries

Matthew 12:19-20

"Not strive," not "cry," not lift up His voice "in the streets," not break "the bruised reed," not quench "the smoking flax"! These are some of the rarest and finest features of a character that is altogether lovely. They are negative characteristics. The character of the Christ is no less unique in its striking absences than in its majestic presences. Its valleys are as conspicuous as its mountains. The Holy Ghost works in the way of a certain exclusion. His handiwork is differentiated from all others by its incomparable restraints.

I. Mark the first of the suppressions in the life that is filled with the Holy Ghost. "He shall not strive." The spirit of wrangling shall be absent. For what is wrangling? Wrangling is the spirit which subordinates the triumph of truth to the triumph of self. When a man begins to wrangle, his sight has become self-centred; he has lost the vision of truth. You never find the wrangling spirit in the main highways of the truth. Wrangling always nourishes itself on side issues. But Christ would not strive. He would not be diverted from the main issues of life and destiny. He had not come to engage in strife, He had come that we might have life. That is how the Spirit of the Lord will work in us. It will make us feel most at home in the heavenly places. It will make us feel out of place in small disputes.

II. "He shall not strive, nor cry." The Messiah shall not cry. He had not come to startle, but to win; to conciliate, not to coerce. "Come now and let us reason together" was the pervading tone of His ministry. And so He put restraint upon His power, but gave no limit to His grace. He was almost niggardly with miracles; He was prodigal with love. Such is the fruit of the Spirit! The man who is filled with the Spirit of God has no desire to make a sensation.

III. "Neither shall any man hear His voice in the streets." Christ abhorred a mere street-religion. He loved the religion that prayed and glowed in the closet, and that radiated its influence out into the street. He could not do with a piety that advertised itself to gain public applause. Christ revealed the Father! Not to honour Himself, for then He said, His honour would be nothing, but to honour His Father—that was the end and purpose of speech and of work. When the Holy Spirit possesses a Matthew 12:19

Will not men look up at a rainbow, unless they are called to it by a clap of thunder?

—Landor.

Matthew 12:19

More than half a century of existence has taught me that most of the wrong and folly which darken earth is due to those who cannot possess their souls in quiet; that most of the good which saves mankind from destruction comes of life that is led in thoughtful stillness.

—George Gissing.

Reference.—XII:19-21.—Spurgeon, Sermons, vol. xix. No1147.

The Loving-kindness of Jesus

Matthew 12:20

It is a frequent expedient of artists to paint pictures in pairs. A landscape will be depicted as it appears in the pearly light of early morn; and, corresponding to it, the same or a similar scene will be painted as it appears in the glowing colours of the evening. In the Gospels we frequently have pictures in pairs. The Pharisee and the Publican; the Rich Man and Lazarus; the Man seeking goodly Pearls and the Treasure hid in a field, these will serve to illustrate the statement. And we have an instructive pair of pictures brought before us in the following words quoted by Matthew from Isaiah's prophecy: "The bruised reed shall He not break, and smoking flax shall He not quench". The first picture is an exterior. The region represented is a flat and marshy one; the locality is lonely and desolate. Growing amid shallow but cold and swirling waters, we see tall reeds and rushes. The sky is grey and heavy, with clouds fleeting before the blast: the reeds bend under the storm: you can almost feel the nipping wind as you look at the picture. And the reeds are swayed hither and thither, being bruised and battered as they jostle one against the other. Look closely at those reeds, and you will scarcely find one that is not scarred and mangled. They are bruised reeds.

The other picture is an interior. "The smoking flax shall He not quench." The picture is that of an Eastern room. We dimly see the low divans or lounges around the walls, and if the light were brighter we might discern the features of the persons reclining there. There is a low table in the centre of the room, and upon it stands a lamp. In shape this lamp is something like a modern teapot; the receptacle being for the oil, and the wick protruding from what would be the spout. That wick should be burning brightly; instead of that, however, there is only a dull red glow, and there is more smoke than light. It is a "smoking lamp". From these two pictures we may learn something as to Christ and Christian character.

I. Let us look at the latter picture first—the smoking lamp. Now a lamp that does not give a good light is not fulfilling the function of its design and manufacture. What is the use of a knife that will scarcely cut? or of a pen that splutters when an attempt is made to write with it? Yet how many professing Christians there are who are not burning and shining lights, but smoking lamps! and what a trouble they are both in the Church and out of it! In a village church lighted with lamps, if one among them smokes, it attracts a great deal of attention and criticism; the others are scarcely noticed. Just so is it with Christians who are symbolized by a smoking lamp. Everybody observes them, and everybody criticises them. They bring dishonour upon themselves and upon their Church. Will any such who may happen to read these lines suffer a word of exhortation? Often when a lamp smokes, what is needed is simply more oil; and oil is the emblem of grace. The lamps of the foolish virgins were "going out" because they had no oil—that Matthew 12:20

It has often been remarked that Vinet praised weak things. If Matthew 12:32

The sensitiveness of this critical age is very wonderful. Considering the immense number of insignificant persons who are favoured with paragraphs and biographies in papers, one might imagine that the great majority would regard with composure what was written about them. This patience might at least be looked for from those whose main occupation it is to abuse their fellow-creatures. As a matter of fact, this equanimity is very rare, even among the greatest. Mr. Gladstone, in his curious chapter of autobiography, tells us that a silly electioneering placard once almost unmanned him. "It freezes the blood in moments of retirement and reflection for a man to think that he can have presented a picture so. hideous to the view of a fellow-creature." More authors than would easily be believed have the criticisms of their books "broken" to them. George Eliot and Dickens could not read theirs at all. There is something very ignoble about this. At all events, the person who cannot endure criticism should refrain from criticising.

I. In singular contrast with this is the majestic and calm temper of Christ, summed up in that marvellous saying, Whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of Matthew 12:32

I. To take these words as an authoritative declaration of the unending duration of evil, and the ceaseless retributive punishment of the evildoer, is to interpose an immeasurable barrier between God and the humanity for the existence of which He is solely responsible; and hopelessly to confuse the standard of moral rectitude, by implying the inability of God to act upon the command He has enforced on men to forgive one another, even until seventy times seven.

It is instructive in this context to note the quotations in Bingham's Antiquities from the early Fathers of the Christian Church in connexion with what is called the "unpardonable sin". "The notion," he says, "that the ancients had of the sin against the Holy Ghost was not that it was absolutely unpardonable, but that men were to be punished for it both in this world and the next, unless they repented of it."

II. Consider, then, what is the cogency and extent of this dread declaration which remains in the page of Holy Scripture as a warning to the hardened and impenitent. The eternal truth is that wilful, continuous opposition to an elemental principle is unforgiveable, in the sense of the removal of the inevitable consequences of the opposition, either in this world or in the spiritual world. If Matthew 12:35

This is the compact statement of a truth upon which Jesus laid the last emphasis—that everything depends on character. The word has two meanings. And according to its original sense character is the mark made upon a stone by engraving. It is therefore the stamp of the soul and the expression of a man's being. Character has also come to acquire a secondary meaning. It is not now what the man Matthew 12:37

We should do well, perhaps, to see what is our responsibility as possessors of the gift of speech, to examine that common endowment which is the distinction and glory of the human race, the gift of language, and what is the responsibility which belongs to us for the right use of our words. We all of us know that we must answer to God for this great gift wherein, as the outward expression of His reason, man stands forth as the acknowledged head of creation.

I. Words of Beauty.—It is to God that we have to answer for our speech, and every misuse of this gift is an offence against Him. A man ought to see to it that he does nothing with his tongue which will break the harmony of this world's prayers or insult the God of beauty, to Whom the homage of creation is unceasingly offered.

II. Words of Truth.—Our words are uttered not only in the presence of the God of beauty, they are uttered in the hearing of the God of truth. We ought to think most earnestly about this division of the subject, because there must be a deep-seated tendency in human nature to abuse this gift of language, to use it in the service of untruthfulness. We are startled from time to time by revelations of gigantic frauds, and wholesale impostures built up by lies. Coming nearer home, are we not obliged to make a wide distinction between things which we hear and things which we see? In our hatred of hypocrisy we have gone to the other extreme. Why are good people so shy in their religious professions? God ought to come first and not the consciousness of men. The man who makes no secret of his principles is the man who in the end suffers the least persecution, and is not tempted really so much to deny his Lord. It is a bad thing to be a hypocrite, but it is also a very bad thing to be a self-conscious coward.

III. Words of Comfort.—Our words are uttered in the face of Him Who is called the God of all comfort, Whose mission it is to strengthen and cheer, as well as in the face of Him Who is the God of beauty and the God of truth. How much can be done by words to help and cheer and advise. How much can be done to pull down, damage, and destroy. When we think of what language has done to enrich the race we may well shrink from the unutterable degradation and base ideas, couched in unworthy and squalid language, while in all our conversation there must always be set before us the importance of truth and honour and respect and love for others. If these be absent, then too soon there sets in that moral warp of character which causes it to lose its hold on the true, the beautiful, and the good. For men despise one who is not true; they mistrust the smart controversialist, and the envenomed critic; they drive him at last from their company, and dethrone him from the pinnacle of their respect. What is this but a reflection of that righteous wrath which, in the end, will cast away for ever from the golden city and the home of truth whatsoever defileth and whatsoever loveth and maketh a lie.

Justification By Words

Matthew 12:37

Many a battle royal has been fought over the doctrines of justification by faith and justification by works, but perhaps we have heard less than we ought about justification by words. It is not an Apostle, but the Master Himself, who urges the too much neglected truth that men are justified by their words.

This great utterance of Jesus was called forth by the malevolent criticism of the Pharisees. He had just performed a great healing miracle which had astonished the assembled crowds, and convinced them that He was the Messiah. The spiteful Pharisees have another explanation. He casts out demons, they said, by the prince of the demons. They do not and dare not deny the fact, but they explain it by asserting that He is in league with the powers of evil. And nothing could have troubled Jesus more than this, that men should look upon His beautiful and gracious deed, and deliberately pronounce it the work of the Devil. Men who could do that were not only lost to all sense of honour, but were devoid of moral sensibilities. Their world was turned upside down. They were the sworn foes of beneficence. They called good evil and evil good. No words, therefore, were too severe to characterize their moral brutality, and our consciences instinctively acknowledge the justice of this great utterance of Jesus, "By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned".

I. It is a great thing, this human speech of ours—a terrible thing! Some, who know the awful powers and dangers that lie hidden in the heart of a word, have thought it the highest wisdom to keep the lips sealed. "Speech is silvern, silence is golden." There are few nations without a proverb which expresses the superiority of silence to speech. Like most words which tersely embody the wisdom of humanity upon its average levels, this proverb is only partly true; it partly needs to be supplemented by a more courageous word. There are indeed times when silence is the highest wisdom; there are other times when silence is a crime! It is a crime to say, in a moment of passion, the thing that wounds; but it is no less a crime to leave unsaid the thing that might have helped or soothed or cheered. The wise man is not always the silent man; he is the man who uses words for God.

II. There is much that is pathetic in the history of human speech. Case-endings, which were originally full of significance, lose their freshness and force, and often vanish altogether, their place being taken, perhaps, by some prepositional phrase, whose clumsiness would have astonished the ancient men. And what has happened to the inflections has too often happened to the words themselves. They have steadily but surely been emptied of their great original content An "awful place" used to mean a place which could touch the spirit to awe—such a place as the ragged hillside where the lonely Jacob saw the angels of God ascending and descending. It would mean something very different Today. Great words have so often passed through careless and insincere lips that they no longer mean what they once meant. "Awfully, has, in much colloquial speech, usurped the place of "very". We use superlatives where sincerer men would use positives; for this Matthew 12:38

I. People are always asking why miracles no longer happen and inferring from their cessation that they never did happen. It seems to me that the answer to this question is writ large in the history of mankind, and the answer is this—man can very rarely be safely entrusted with any exceptional power. The experience of the world proves this. It is really the moral of the Old Testament Scriptures. Such phrases as "God's spirit striving with Matthew 12:44

I. The Partial Reformation.—The three predicates are all significant. Empty, the old tenant has gore out, but no new one come in. Swept, some of the dirt is cleared away. Garnished, some attempts at decoration made. So it is a perfect picture of superficial reformation of morals without religion. Swept, representing suppression of vice. Garnished, representing some alteration for the good. But the failure of the whole thing because it is empty. There is no lofty enthusiasm, no high principle, no seed of a Divine life. Most accurately of all, there is no indwelling Christ.

II. The End of it in Complete Submission.—All reformation which leaves the heart empty is precarious. There is danger from strength of habit, power of circumstances, weakness of our will. It is like an empty bottle, let down into the sea, the sides smashed in. Christ must fill it if we would have it whole, otherwise there is no reason why the demon should not enter again. Whitewash and beautifying will not keep him out.

Partial reformation which fails makes a man very much worse. "Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself." Sometimes worse vices come instead of the original, i.e. a man gives up one vice and takes to others, as a gardener changes the things he grows.

III. The Only Thorough and Secure Way is to Cast Out the Evil Spirit.—A stronger than he cometh, i.e. goes out because Christ comes in, fills the heart and is garrison and guard to keep it. There is the presence within of a new nature, the expulsive power of a new affection. As regards our lower nature, there is no better way of curing a lower desire than to kindle, if it were possible, a higher, which will expel the lower taste. So we are not to go fighting in our own strength, but to open our hearts for Christ's entrance. He will come and fill our souls.

—A. Maclaren.

References.—XII:45.—J. B. Mozley, Sermons Parochial and Occasional, p118. XII:46-50.—C. Holland, Gleanings from a Ministry of Fifty Years, p123. H. Ward Beecher, Sermons (1Series), p284. XII:48.—H. W. Morrow, Christian World Pulpit, vol. lxxiii1908 , p59. XII:48-50.—R. E. Hutton, The Crown of Christ, vol. i. p109. XII:49 , 50.—W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit, p474. J. P. Chown, The Penny Pulpit, vol. xiv. No846 , p445. XII:50.—R. C. Fillingham, Christian World Pulpit, vol. liv1898 , p339. XIII:1-9.—A. Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture—St. Matthew IX-XVII. p201. XIII:1-23.—J. Laidlaw, Studies in the Parables, p49.